Poetry In The Age Of Cinema

Lena got all leather for her motorbike, M. Ducati,
on his kind of night, avenger of clerks & cretins.
Jewel thief because everything is stolen, champagne
sipped from a bota bag on her back, piped into her helmet,
pistol clipped to the back of one boot (this whole game
sometimes gets played that way, and she won’t go dead
for being stupid). Maybe a smash and grab. She knows
the city’s grid like a coroner loose in veins, alleyways
too narrow for cop cars, tunnels to confuse copters,
little storage units here and there to ditch a bike,
walk off to a nearby bar and call for a ride home.
The way she kneels before him, opens a black glove,
and a string of diamonds lays there like an answer
for everything, a pass in this world to go go go
everywhere now! Then, he’ll read her a poem,
and she weeps, and holds onto him like the earth
had split right there in their Echo Park palace,
his body anchored above their abyss. Then,
they make love like a bomb squad’s worst day,
and it’s so quiet and careful and fevered until
she cuts the blue wire, and then they die ever
so voluptuously. She lives for her four perfect
acts each year, and he must match them, poem
for heist. And that’s how they must live. Seconds
gong and the furniture shakes; their tale
available to lightning rods...Richter Scale.